Incubating

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rockgoblin

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I ordered 24 eggs on Monday and only 12 arrived on Tuesday.I put them to rest at room temp but the other eggs wont arrive until Thursday will the earlier delivered eggs be ok to wait 2 more days before putting all the eggs into the incubator :-)07 together.

Many Thanks
 
Not ideal, I wonder why one batch was late, did you get them from somebody else? Keep the eggs gently moving by rocking the box a bit from one side to the other twice a day, and keep them cool.
If you do want to incubate all the eggs, you'll have to wait for the second lot and then give them a further 24 hours to settle before the start, as they must all be at the same stage during incubation. When the eggs are due to pip, you couldn't stop turning the eggs for one lot and not the other, and they have to all be due to hatch together on the same day.
Much will depend on how fresh each batch was when posted to you. They should be OK if less than 10 days old when you incubate. Get the incubator well warmed up and tested for 24 hours before you start. Good luck!
 
Thanks for the reply.

Sorry I wasn't going to put one batch in and when the others arrived put them in i was just asking if it would be ok to store the first eggs and wait for the second lot to be delivered.

Many Thanks
 
Splitting hatches is problematic Rockgoblin, although we always do it for 6 days apart because it allows maximum use of the incubator. It should be fine storing them for a few days and as Marigold says don't forget to let the last dozen settle for 24 hours. That's how long you should have your incubator running initially anyway, just to be sure it stabilises. They should be stored at 12C and 80% humidity and brought to room temperature the day before they go into the incubator. I would advise using egg sanitizer as it is very effective at preventing bacterial infection- a major factor in egg hatch failures. The day the eggs go in is day zero. If they hatch before day21 the temperature is too high and sickly chicks can result. I recommend checking the accuracy of your thermometer -we use a clinical thermometer for that.

You haven't said what incubator you are using. We had massive problems with the cheap auto-turning Suro20 model. The insulation of the casing is effectively non-existent. The result was eggs to the outside hatched 3 days late because they were cold- regardless of what the thermometer said! Reading the very small print they recommend that the unit isn't operated in an ambient temperature of less than 20C and I suspect that 25C would be more appropriate. We have therefore moved back to semi-automatics which need a lever pulled or pushed to turn the eggs. They are far better insulated and we had excellent results at just 10C room temperature.
 
I have two incubators of which my first is similar to what you describe there. I found that wrapping the bottom half of it in a towel vastly improved the functionality as it goes a long way towards stabilising the temperature. I also add stones to the bottom of the incubator which I feel help maintain the temperature as they warm through in the pre-incubation test period.
 
I am hoping for a really good hatch on Sunday.
13 eggs, 12 were posted, one of my own, the bought eggs are 6 black Pekins, and six Light Sussex bantams. The 100% fertility does exonerate the postman, who constantly gets it in the neck for sellers infertile eggs, it is not the postman that makes eggs fertile or infertile.
Point about all this is that my Brinsea Eco 20 with turner takes care of my eggs quite well. I would like a second 24 egg incubator as a back up.
Found a couple on ebay very cheaply at about £50.00 each respectively.
I did wonder at the seeming lack of insulation, and emailed one of the sellers asking about the quality of insulatiion as both the incubators concerned, were slim good looking models, very streamlined. Needles to say I did not get a reply.
My Brinsea does the job, but is very expensive, and I cannot afford a second one.
Anyone who has bought a streamlined cheap one, and can recommend it, please?
 
I now have a Janoel12 (6 large fowl / 9 bantam eggs for auto turning or 18+ eggs for manual turning if the turner mechanism is removed) and a Brinsea Octagon 20. To be honest, both appear to have a grand total of 0 insulation on top other than the one sheet of plastic. The Octagon is better at holding the temperature as it appears to have a beefier heater while I compensate on the Janoel by wrapping the bottom half of the incubator in a towel (in my experimentation when running it without eggs, I found that covering the top half as per instructions increases the likelihood of it overheating). The Janoel is also not as good at staying shut so I put a large rubber band around it to be sure. The autoturning on the Janoel sucks, but good manual turning makes it quite a reasonable incubator which is on a par with the Octagon after the modifications.

Talking of post, I received some eggs today and was one cracked because something sharp got jabbed through the box. I'm glad it was one of the ones that I'm not as worried about! But goes to show, even (hopefully) fertile eggs can get kicked about a bit.
 
I seem to remember the Janoel24 was a cheapie from China 2 years ago that only turned the eggs about 30 degrees and so the chicks stuck to the shells- needs to be an oscillation of 90 degrees. Another issue was the wild fluctuations in actual temperature. Worth checking KittyKat.
 
The automatic turner does 45° on a large chicken egg (more on smaller ones) and over 90° on a quail egg. I have only used automatic turning for quail eggs, not for anything larger! I prefer to use it in manual turn mode from which I can get a 90° turn (remove the turning mechanism, sit the eggs fat end up and turn by sticking a bit of wood under the incubator on the correct side). I've hatched chickens, quails and ducks with it now. I got good results every time (the best was 91% on duck eggs). The biggest problem that I have had is when someone sent me eggs which had only a 50% fertility rate.

I might be getting fewer issues with temperature fluctuations because I can fit 15+ chicken/duck eggs in it if I'm doing manual turning and I stuff the bottom full of rocks which probably helps keep the temperature steady. After a few lots of incubating, I decided to get the Brinsea because it does good automatic turning and takes a fair few eggs without need for modification. At the moment, I am doing a comparison test of the two because I wanted to be sure once and for all how much of a difference there is. I have 24 eggs in the Brinsea and 11 of the same lot in the Janoel. Brinsea is auto-turning, while I'm manually turning the Janoel.
 
The only problem with manual turning I can see, apart from temperature fluctuations, is the possibility of introducing bacterial infection KittyKat.
 
I turn the whole incubator itself rather than the eggs in the same manner that the Octagon is turned in the cradle. I realised after my first incubation that turning the eggs individually was rather fiddly and awkward, and then realised that there was nothing stopping me from turning the incubator rather than the eggs. I will try to get a photo for you later today!
 
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